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Saturday, October 27, 2012

A Road Trip for Readers by Neil Plakcy

Neil Plakcy’s golden retriever mysteries were inspired by
his own golden, Samwise, who was just as sweet as Rochester, though not quite
as smart. And fortunately he didn’t have Rochester’s talent for finding dead
bodies. Now that Sam has gone on to his big, comfy bed in heaven, his place by
Neil’s side has been taken by Brody, a cream-colored golden puppy with a
penchant for mischief.

A native of Bucks County, PA, where IN DOG WE TRUST, THE
KINGDOM OF DOG and DOG HELPS THOSE are set, Neil is a graduate of the
University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Florida International
University, where he received his MFA in creative writing. He has written and
edited many other books; details can be found at his website, http://www.mahubooks.com.

Neil, his partner, and Brody live in South Florida, where
Neil is working on a fourth mystery, and Brody is busily chewing something.

A Road Trip for Readers

by Neil Plakcy

Let me take you on
a little trip, to the river towns of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I grew up in
Yardley, right smack dab in the middle of this string of charming towns. I write
about a place much like it in my golden retriever mysteries.

Bucks County
snuggles against the curves of the Delaware River, forming the boundary between
Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Within easy commuting distance of New York and
Philadelphia, it’s home to a growing and increasingly transient population. As its
farmlands gradually give way to suburban developments, some of those old
connections are lost. I try to recreate a bit of that lost world in my books—my
hero runs into classmates at the local coffee shop, and helps his childhood
piano teacher out of a jam.

Writing about
Bucks County has reminded me that my high school typing teacher, Mrs. Scammell,
still lived at Scammell’s Corner, where generations of her family had farmed.
The names of my classmates’ parents were on everything from garbage trucks to antique
stores. Today, they have been replaced by chain stores and restaurants, but
these the towns along the Delaware’s banks still retain their charm.

Yardley is a small
town of Victorian gingerbread and native brown stone. There is only one traffic
light in town, at the corner of Main and Afton. To the east is the Delaware
River, and the ruins of the bridge to New Jersey that was destroyed in 1960 by
Hurricane Donna. To the west is the old mill pond, now Lake Afton, where swans
paddle beside the Victorian library, built by local residents in 1878. The
mystery section was located beside one of those high, gothic-arched windows,
and I used to look out at the water between browsing for the classic mystery
authorswho cultivated my taste for
crime fiction-- Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie.

Today the library
has moved to a modern facility in the country, but children and adults still use
its steps to change into their skates for a quick turn on the ice in the
winter, creating a tableau straight out of Norman Rockwell.

Though the Hyatt Pharmacy at the corner is now
a Starbucks, Yardley retains a small-town charm. I’ve even converted the Continental
Tavern, which has been serving thirsty travelers at this intersection since
1863, into my own bar, called the Drunken Hessian. This is, after all, the
stretch of river where Washington crossed the Delaware en route to his attack
on the Hessian outpost at Trenton.

My fictional
Stewart’s Crossing is just north of Yardley, on a stretch of beautiful
riverfront that in real life contains only farmland. River Road, which my hero,
paroled computer hacker Steve Levitan, travels a lot, is overhung with oaks,
maples and elms and is lined with purple and white phlox on long stems and the
tiny pansies called Johnny jump-ups.

As the rest of the
river towns do, Stewart’s Crossing straddles the Delaware Canal, and I’ve used
the canal and its towpath in my books, starting with In Dog We Trust.
Steve walks his inherited golden retriever, Rochester, there. Despite the town
nearby, the towpath is wild and quiet, lined with wild apple blossoms in the
spring, climbing vines and yellow daisies and buttercups. Rochester loves to
chase the mallards, Canada geese, other small birds, and maybe a rabbit or two.

Before railroads,
canals played an important role in American commerce and transportation. They carried
anthracite coal from the mines of Lehigh County to New York City and
Philadelphia. Two hundred years later, the only traffic on the Delaware Canal
comes from mule-drawn sightseeing barges run from New Hope, where an artists’
colony grew in the early twentieth century. When I was a teenager in the 1970s,
New Hope was filled with hippies, head shops and antique stores, and it still
retains a unique character today.

The land is low
along the river and the verge is very narrow in many places from Yardley north
to New Hope. I placed a car accident there in In Dog We Trust, though I’d
probably never walk my own dog there, as the river is so close you can almost
reach out and touch it.

In The
Kingdom of Dog, Steve takes Rochester up to Bowman's Hill Tower, just
inland from the river. It was built of local stone in 1930 and now stands over
a nice park with barbecues and picnic pavilions named for Revolutionary War
heroes. The picnic grounds are green and rolling, and the slope is just right
for little kids to roll down. We often went there for school picnics in the
spring. The tower is open from April to November, and is the centerpiece of a
100-acre wildflower preserve.

I’ve driven up the
curving road many times, as well as hiking the trail up to the tower through
woods that seem untouched since Washington's day. Once you've reached the
summit, take the elevator up inside the tower and climb the last 21 steps,
through a narrow, curving passageway more reminiscent of medieval Europe than
depression-era Pennsylvania, to the observation platform, 110 feet up.

On a clear day, you
can see 60 miles in any direction, and you'll understand why Washington sent
his scouts to the top of this hill to watch for redcoats. The vista is of farms
and fields, but increasingly you'll see renovated half-million-dollar farmhouses
and fake-colonial suburbs. Look closely and you’ll see the area where I placed
Steve’s alma mater, Eastern College.

I created the
small college town of Leighville somewhere outside Upper Black Eddy, just a bit
farther up the river from New Hope. Eastern dominates the hill overlooking the
river, and provides another environment where Steve and Rochester can sniff out
criminal intent. The third book in the series, Dog Helps Those,
combines a college mystery with a murder in the world of dog agility training,
and gave me a chance to return to the farmlands outside town where my parents
used to take me to pick apples and strawberries, and to choose our Halloween
pumpkins.

I try to
incorporate the landscape of this area where I grew up, as well as years of
loving dogs, in creating the world where my characters live. I may not live in
Pennsylvania any more, but I love revisiting these river towns in my
imagination, even though dastardly deeds occur there!

More information
on my golden retriever mysteries, as well as my other mystery and romance
novels and stories, can be found at my website, http://www.mahubooks.com.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE

WOMEN'S SPACES WOMEN'S PLACES

CLOTHES LINES from 75 Western North Carolina Women Writers

CLOTHES LINES from 75 Western North Carolina Women Writers

I'm a lover of words and a lover of images.

The photos you see in the blog posts were mostly shot by me or by husband Donald. Or, they're old family photos - a lovely little benefit of being a part of families who recognized the beauty of preserving our history through photography.

If the photos are not ours, I have tried whenever possible to caption or link the photos to their source. This hasn't always been possible as there are a lot of uncredited images available through the internet.

My sincere thanks to the generosity of so many talented photographers who so graciously share their work for so many of us to enjoy, share and learn from.

IF you see a photo here that is a copyright infringement, please send me an email (barleykw @ appstate dot com) and I'll remove it immediately.

Books Read

Every year I promise myself I'm going to keep a log of books I'm reading. And I immediately forget. Then I remember again, but only after I've already read a few books, but can't be sure I'll remember them all and so - - can't bring myself to start the list. It's sort of like missing the first 30 minutes of a movie. I just can't watch it if I've missed the beginning. And being the anal ol' soul I am, I can't bring myself to start a list if I can't be sure it's going to be a complete one.So.I decided to keep a list during 2010 and found it to be a fun thing. Especially for a compulsive list-maker like myself.

FTC Disclosure Notice

FTC has a regulation which went into effect in December, 2009 which says, basically - "Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined." Significantly fined. So. Since I happen to be an amateur blogger who sometimes receives free books, here's my required FTC Disclosure Notice: Dear FTC - Regarding review copies of books obtained for this blog. No other compensation is accepted beyond review copies of books - ever. When I do write a review, or opinion, the source of the book cited will be disclosed in the post in which the review/opinon appears. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me.